Andreja Pejic And The Rise Of Transgender Models

Andreja Pejic, one of the world's most beautiful women, is now making a documentary to catalog her modeling career and transition from boyhood to androgyny to womanhood.

"I knew I was different from an early age," says Pejic, a radiant 6'1" blonde who was assigned male at birth. "When childhood ended I had to suppress feminine characteristics and try and be a boy. I didn’t want to grow up at all because it meant becoming someone else. People ask you if you are gay but no one says you could be trans."

Pejic is currently raising funds for Andrej(a), a film that will track her journey. She is hoping to raise some $100,000 through Kickstarter, with the aim of submitting the film to festivals ("HBO would be great, too").

Born in Tuzla, Bosnia, just before the Bosnian war, Pejic's mother and elder brother were granted refugee status to Australia when Pejic was 8. Scouted by an agent on New Year's Eve in 2007 while working at a McDonalds in Melbourne, Pejic finished high school before heading to Europe to look for work. "I struggled to find an agency in London because no one knew whether they should put me in the men's board or the women’s board," Pejic recalls, speaking over the phone from her agency in New York. "There was a lot of uncertainty about my commercial viability."

Andreja Pejic is one of the world's most well-known transgender models. (Image courtesy The Society Management)

After researching transgender living online at a local library, Pejic says she started taking a medication, Androcur, to suppress male puberty. "I was planning to transition right after high school and attend university as a girl, but then the modeling thing came up," Pejic, now 23, explains. "It was an opportunity to see the world. My family knew I identified as a girl, but I didn't tell people in fashion."

Pejic's first job landed her on the cover of Australian fashion magazine Oyster. She caused a stir by modeling Jean Paul Gaultier men's and women's shows in Paris' January 2011 fashion week, where she was also cast by menswear designers including Paul Smith, John Galliano, Raf Simons and Jean Paul Gaultier. "The opportunity presented itself to be the poster child of androgyny," Pejic says.

She quickly notched menswear advertising campaigns with Marc by Marc Jacobs, Neil Barrett and Martyn Bal, plus women's wear lines Silvian Heach and Hema. Pejic swiftly became what New York Magazine called fashion’s best cut-rate deal: clients could have Pejic could model women's clothing without paying her a woman's rate. Since completing her sex reassignment surgery in 2014, Pejic has signed with the women-only Society Management, and her fees are likely to rise with it.

Modeling is one of the only industries where women earn more than men. In 2014, the world's highest-paid model, Gisele Bundchen, made an estimated $47 million before taxes and fees. By comparison, the last time FORBES calculated male models' earnings, in 2013, top-earner Sean O'Pry banked a relatively paltry $1.5 million.

America's estimated 1.5 million transgender people face widespread discrimination. According to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, a 2011 report on 6,450 trans and gender-nonconforming people from within the U.S., 90% of trans people said they have dealt with discrimination at work. Nearly 20% reported being denied a place to live, while 47% said they had been ﬁred, not hired or denied a promotion because of their gender status. A devastating 41% have attempted suicide, compared with 1.6% of the general population. In 2012, 53% of anti-LGBT homicide victims were transgender women.

Being a trans model amplifies the pressures all trans women face, says Hari Nef, a model and actress currently in her senior year at Columbia University. "It's difficult to fit a female sample garment when your bones developed as male. It's difficult to pass as female, period," Nef explained over email.

While Pejic is not the first prominent trans model - April Ashley, Caroline "Tula" Cossey, Teri Toye, Connie Fleming, Carmen Carrera have all graced runways in the last 50 years - her public transition signifies the increasing acceptance of transgender people in the most image-obsessed industry of all.

Barneys New York this year launched an advertising campaign featuring transgender models while Brazilian beauty Lea T, who has appeared in Givenchy campaigns and catwalk shows, recently signed as hair care brand Redken's spokesperson. This is the first major beauty contract for an openly trans model and a sign of changing times - beauty and fragrance contracts remain the most lucrative for models, meaning faces like Lea T and Pejic may soon appear on FORBES' list of highest-paid models.

"We're all people with our own personality, our own beauty, our own life," Lea T said in a statement. "I love working with Redken because they appreciate all kinds of beauty. They believe in the individuality of the person, and I think that's really important."

"Trans models are making history every month," says Nef, 22, who was one of very few "out" trans models at New York's recent fashion week, walking the runway for designers including Hood by Air.

"There are plenty of folks in the modeling industry who identify as trans but are not "out" to the public as trans individuals. "Out" models are pidgeonholed, where stealth girls might be able to move more easily between a wider range of jobs and contexts," said Nef. "There are more and more jobs for out trans models, but most them are identity-focused or quite outré. It's harder for an out trans girl to book a blue chip runway where she gets one look and simply walks out with all the other girls."

"When I was growing up and I turned the television on the only time I saw a transgender woman was on Jerry Springer or on NCIS as a dead prostitute, there were no role models," Pejic says. "I want to keep sharing my story in the hope that young trans people or just people who feel different or ostracized have something to look up to."

Nef echoes this sentiment: "I don't see being transgender as something I want to or have to "hide." It's a casual but essential part of my context. Trans people need role models, or as Laverne Cox puts it: "possibility" models."